Plan Helps Victims Of Bad Checks Recover

Over the past two years, Joan Minarik, an owner of Connecting Point Computers in Grafton, says she's seen an increase in the number of bad checks she gets from customers.

That costs more money than just the lost merchandise, Minarik noted. For any hope of collecting the money, her staff of six has to use work time to try and track down the delinquent buyer. And if that doesn't work, she might have to use staff time to take the customer to court, which may not even pay off in the end.

Minarik hopes a new program to target bad check writers will help her recoup lost money and save employee time.

The program, spearheaded by the commonwealth's attorneys in Hampton, Newport News and York County will use an outside company, called Bounce Back, to track down the authors of bad checks and offer them an alternative to prosecution.

Starting Wednesday, merchants in those three localities can turn bad checks over to the company, which will then look for offenders. Then the bogus check writers either pay up or face prosecution. If they want to avoid court, the offenders set up a payment plan and take a class in how to manage their finances to avoid writing bad checks in the future.

Neither the merchants nor the taxpayers foot the bill for the program. The cost of tracking down offenders is paid by the offenders themselves.

"It'll be a lot easier process," said Minarik. "It will be minimal time for us. It will be saving time and money."

If the offender does not comply with payment, the commonwealth's attorney in that community can go forward with a court case. Bad checks written for more than $200 can result in criminal charges.

Typically, bad check cases are hard to bring to court, said Linda Curtis, Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney. Most bad check cases are not assigned to police officers for investigation, which makes it difficult to build a court case.

Without a police investigation, prosecutors and merchants are left to build the case against someone. But a large number of other criminal cases to prosecute leaves attorneys with limited time to invest in bad checks. And merchants with small staffs sometimes can't dedicate time to go to court.

"Writing bad checks is a crime that we often don't have the resources to pay attention to," Curtis said. "And it is a crime. Every bad check costs a consumer somewhere along the line."

It's that extra cost to the consumer -- passed along in higher prices -- that Curtis and Howard Gwynn, of Newport News, and Eileen Addison, of York County, hope to cut down on with the program.

Merchants, especially small businesses, benefit because often the difficulty of getting a conviction in court leads business owners to simply accept the lost revenue.

"What a savings this will be for our merchants who quite often just eat the cost of the bad check," Addison said.

Jessie Halladay can be reached at 247-4799 or by e-mail at jhalladay@dailypress.com